On Saturday 10 December 2005 16:26, Anon Anon wrote: > That is widespread in US medicine. American medical > sources say that 'µg' should not be used. They > recommend 'microgram' or 'mcg'. The stated reasons are > that it could be mistaken for mg or ng. The same > reasoning would apply to any use of the prefix. See: > http://www.med.umich.edu/prmc/star/archive/2004/0107/abbrev.htm > > The British medical view is that 'mcg' must not be > used. See: > http://www.pjonline.com/pdf/hp/200206/hp_200206_exercises.pdf > http://www.firstdatabank.co.uk/pdfs/multilex_bulletins/September-2005.pdf
I don't see how 'µ' could be confused with 'm' or 'n'. 'µ' is concave up and begins below the line; 'm' and 'n' are concave down and entirely above the line. 'm' could be confused with 'n' though. As to computers miswriting the symbols, they are probably using obsolete software. 'µ' requires two bytes in UTF-8, and if the computer is set up only for ASCII, it's not available. There are still lots of applications using the punch-card mentality, in which all fields are fixed-width and all letters are uppercase (it is possible to encode a lowercase letter on a punched card, but it was very rare back then). As databases nowadays allow arbitrary-width fields in any of several character codes, I consider this inexcusable. phma
